If it’s possible to hear a slight wince over the phone, it’s at least borderline perceptible when director Bennett Miller is asked to discuss Oscar prospects for his Moneyball, which has opened to rave reviews and been mentioned often as a contender in the early Academy Awards buzz. He appreciates the recognition but noted, “I have no idea what’s going to happen in that regard. The movie just came out and I think it’s a bit dangerous to get caught up in that. On one hand, you make a film and you want it to connect with people. That’s the main thing. All the other stuff is a whole world and industry unto itself.”
This isn’t the first time Miller–who directs spots and branded content via Smuggler (see separate profile in this issue’s Directors Series section)–has been associated with a film generating substantive Oscar conjecture. The first time around, that speculation turned out to be largely accurate as his feature film Capote earned five nominations in 2006 and won one, Best Lead Actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Capote was additionally nominated for Oscars in the Best Motion Picture, Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay categories. Additionally, Miller earned a DGA Award nomination for the film.
Queried as to whether there was a lesson learned from that awards season that could serve him in good stead this time around, Miller observed, “The lesson is to appreciate the recognition if it comes. However, if it doesn’t, don’t sweat it. You can’t get too caught up in it. I just want the film to connect with viewers.”
As for how he connected with Moneyball, based on the book of the same title by Michael Lewis, Miller related that he was drawn to a universal theme that transcended the baseball subject matter.
Of the protagonist, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane–portrayed by Brad Pitt–Miller shared, “He’s an outsider of sorts at a point in his life where he begins to question everything, including the decision he made when he was a kid to take a course that brought him to where he is. It leads him to wonder if there really wasn’t a different life that he was supposed to be living. It’s an interesting theme that almost everybody meditates on. ‘Is this really my life?’ ‘What else could I have done or become?’ ‘Is it too late?’ ‘What if I made–or make–different decisions?'”
Indeed Miller saw a dynamic in a book which on the surface wouldn’t seem to so readily translate into a movie. The screenplay was written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, the latter a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner earlier this year for The Social Network.
Pitt heads a cast that also includes Jonah Hill and the aforementioned Hoffman. Hill plays assistant general manager Peter Brand, the young numbers cruncher who espouses a new formula for evaluating talent that bucks baseball’s conventional wisdom but might be revolutionary enough to enable the small market Oakland A’s to compete with the big payroll teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. And Hoffman portrays Oakland A’s field manager Art Howe.
Indeed in Moneyball, Miller explores with both humor and drama the prospect of adapting, of changing your game on different levels, professionally and personally.
A Better Life In contrast to Miller, director Chris Weitz jumped at the chance to discuss Oscar prospects for his poignant A Better Life–not for superficial “Hollywood” ego-stroking reasons but because this film puts a human face on an issue that’s become near and dear to his heart: immigration. Furthermore, A Better Life had a limited run and is thus relatively obscure compared to its big budgeted feature competitors, meaning it could go unnoticed in the mainstream despite glowing reviews–particularly for its lead actor Demian Bichir.
So Weitz, who’s had a hand in several Academy Award-nominated films over the years, feels compelled to drum up notice for A Better Life given the importance of the story and the performance of Bichir who plays undocumented immigrant and hard-working single dad Carlos Galindo.
The movie centers on Galindo and his efforts to make a better life for himself and his teenage son. It’s also a story about a father desperately trying to reconnect with his son in order to keep him from getting pulled into the local gang life.
As for what drew him to A Better Life, Weitz noted that his father was a refugee and that his grandmother is from Mexico.
“I come from an immigrant background,” said Weitz, “and I sensed that this film would be an opportunity for me to get in touch with some of the culture I hadn’t paid much attention to. To make this movie properly, I would have to learn some Spanish–and I’m still learning Spanish today. I learned about East Los Angeles in the process as well, part of the world I really didn’t know even though I live in L.A. It’s a part of town easy for Angelenos not to know yet it’s crucial to so many. There’s a flow of life from East L.A. to West L.A., of the people who take care of people’s lawns and gardens, who take care of their children, who prepare food. The people in West L.A. are largely unaware of what East L.A. is really about. It’s a world that hasn’t been shown very often except in some cliched fashion in movies or on TV–gangs, drugs and danger are all that’s depicted.”
Weitz said the script for A Better Life “was the best I had read in the past 20 years.”
Ironically, the project has been about that long in the making, going through various stages and delays before the script was contemporized by writer Eric Eason and it arrived on Weitz’s desk, brought to him by a friend, Christian McLaughlin, who is one of the movie’s producers.
Weitz dove into the project, first seeking out Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle who founded Homeboy Industries, an organization that operates bakeries and a pair of cafes, one of which is in L.A. City Hall, providing jobs to those who want to leave gang life. Father Boyle started an educational process for Weitz who began to understand the world next door he had previously ignored. Weitz began to have a substantive emotional connection with the people he met.
Although A Better Life had a limited life in release, it’s taken on other lives, transitioning Weitz from “the filmmaking phase to the advocacy phase.” He added, “Our biggest theater in the nation was located in Bethesda, Maryland, where a lot of big politicos live. People in the political community started seeing this film and became interested–the National Council of La Raza got interested, as did the National Hispanic Caucus. We had a screening at the congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual meeting. The film connected with those advocating for immigration reform. Even though A Better Life was conceived 20 years ago, it couldn’t be more timely in terms of issues that need to have light shed on them today. It’s not a political film per se. But people from think tanks have told me, ‘You can pause this film at about 20 points–one relates to the Secure Communities Act, anther to The Dream Act, another to the position of immigrant workers in our society.’
“The story, though, is a human one,” continued Weitz. “No one comes out and states a political position. The characters are just doing their jobs. There’s no villain per se. The heroism is often quite quiet. That’s the way we wanted to keep it. We weren’t out to demonize any particular bunch of people–whether it be the immigration department officers or even the gang members. We see gangs in a familial context, making it easier to understand the reality that for a young person who thinks he has no prospects and is warehoused in a school, a gang could be looked to as a source of identity, or the last stop to make something of yourself.”
Weitz related that in its own way, A Better Life “addresses what is going to be the biggest social issue of our time which is the question of immigration and how to treat those [undocumented workers] already in this country, many of whom have taken on the jobs no one else wants.”
As alluded to earlier, Weitz has enjoyed some Oscar recognition in his career. He, Paul Weitz and Peter Hedges were nominated for a Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Academy Award in 2003 on the strength of About A Boy, which Chris and Paul Weitz teamed to direct.
Additionally, Chris Weitz’s individual directing credits include The Golden Compass which won the Visual Effects Oscar in ’08, and the boxoffice teen hit New Moon, part of the vampire-driven Twilight Saga series. Weitz also was a producer on A Single Man, which marked the directing debut of Tom Ford and for which Colin Firth was nominated for the Best Leading Actor Oscar.
Still, for Weitz, all this past Oscar recognition would pale in comparison to A Better Life breaking into the nominees’ circle, the most viable contender likely being Bichir whose performance has received resounding critical acclaim, including a review from Peter Travers of Rolling Stone crediting him with giving “one of the year’s best performances.”
Weitz cited Bichir’s “understated performance as opening the door for audiences to meet him half way in understanding the character.”
The director noted that Bichir “plays a man who’s spent the majority of his life not trying to be noticed. Demian is a relatively unknown actor compared to the name stars but he brought home a movie about people we don’t know or recognize. For Demian to take that role and do such subtle and quiet things with it makes it all the more exceptional. He uses silence in a way that matters so much. For me, there’s so much more at stake in this film due to what it’s about. It means a great deal to me that Demian be nominated.”
Editor’s note: For more on another Oscar candidate, see this week’s Cinematographers & Cameras feature story in the Directors Series section. One of the cinematographers profiled is Ben Smithard, BSC, who lensed My Week With Marilyn, directed by Simon Curtis and with a cast that includes Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond and Dougray Scott.
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